The Mystery of the Menacing Mirror Men

“The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.”

— George Bernard Shaw

        By Dan Hagen

A riddle worthy of the Batman.

From childhood on, I understood with a boy’s instincts why superheroes had to have colorful costumes, dual identities, spectacular powers, formidable foes, fast and fabulous vehicles, even Fortresses of Solitude and Bottled Cities of Kandor (think tree houses and ant farms writ large).

Only two conventions persistently puzzled me — why these perfectly self-contained superheroes bothered with girlfriends, and why they seemed to be constantly confronted by their doubles.

The girlfriend thing eventuall­­­­y resolved itself, but the seemingly weird obsession with doubles continued to puzzle me.

The theme of doubling was especially prevalent in the comics. The double was built right into the concept of most superheroes in the form of the secret identity or “alter ego.” Superman and Clark Kent, Batman and Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker and Spider-Man, always the two who were one.

And then there were the arch-enemies, who always turned out to be, in one way or another, funhouse mirror dark doubles of the hero.

Thus, Lex Luthor is an evil intellectual superman opposed by a heroic physical Superman. The Joker is a cackling costumed sociopath opposed by a grim costumed crime fighter. Dr. Octopus is a mature, many-limbed creature-themed villain opposed by a teenaged hero whose costume suggests a creature with many limbs.

The Thing battles the Thing.

The heroic magician Dr. Strange saves us from the evil magician Baron Mordo, and both were students of the Ancient One. The heroic Norse god Thor shields us from the evil Norse god Loki, and so forth.

Not only the heroes’ enemies but also their allies often mirrored them. Early on, Batman acquired a Robin and Captain Marvel was assisted by Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, various Lieutenants Marvel and whatnot. Superman was echoed in Superboy (literally his younger self) and then in Krypto the Superdog and Supergirl, while Batman met Ace the Bathound, Batwoman, Bat-Girl and Batgirl (two different girls, don’t ask). Hawkgirl, Spider-Woman, the She-Hulk, the Bionic Woman, the Greatest American Heroine, the list is inexhaustible.

The mirror-nature of the archenemies and the alter ego and the sidekicks is obvious, but the comic books didn’t leave the double theme there. They underlined it repeatedly and directly with robot doubles, mirror creatures, clones and various other dopplegangers.

Thus Superman faced any number of literal duplicates, the most prominent of whom was Bizarro. Batman, with his Batmobile and Batplane and Bat Signal, fought Killer Moth, with his Mothmobile and Mothplane and Moth Signal.

Wonder Woman battles the villainous Super Woman

The Incredible Hulk battled his equally incredible duplicate gamma-ray monster the Abomination. Spider-Man fought the evil spider guy Venom, who in turn spawned the evil spider guy Carnage. Green Lantern stood against the renegade Green Lantern Corps member Sinestro. The Flash raced against Reverse Flash. The armored capitalist Iron Man dueled the armored communists Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man.

So why were all these doubles redoubled? The answer has deep roots, I think.

Critic Mark Schorer noted that the Gothic tradition, or what Nathaniel Hawthorne would have called the romance tradition, refers to “...stories that are set in a world where we continually move without transition or warning from the actual into the dream, from the real into the surreal, from the natural into the supernatural.”

That’s a description that neatly fits the comic book superhero stories, which shift constantly from mundane and recognizable urban reality to nightmarish mythological battle zones and back again.

“They are stories whose central concern is with the theme of the Doppleganger, the alter ego, and the supernatural is, in fact, symbolic of the world in which that other self, which we cannot ever confront in the busy social world, exists.

“These are stories generally about lonely, loveless people — or, at any rate, they seem to be lonely because they are loveless — who encounter strange, often offensive creatures with whom they are, in one way or another, trapped and whom they cannot and usually do not wish to escape, for these creatures are their selves, their fate, whom they are helpless to shun." 

Deepak and Gotham Chopra, in their book “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes,” note that the doubling theme can explore the Jungian Shadow or dark side of the personality.

“At one point a dark symbiote latches onto the heroic Spider-Man. The shadow being brings out Spider-Man’s darker impulses, making him arrogant, vengeful and selfish. His iconic red and blue suit even turns black as he literally takes on a shadowy persona. But eventually Spider-Man, through his own awareness, is able to resist these shadow qualities and sheds the symbiote. It then occupies another being and becomes one of Spider-Man's archenemies, known as Venom, forever stalking him and reminding the great superhero of what he could become if he were to give in to his own shadow self.”

So it’s all a metaphor, unconscious but existentially valid. As we journey though life, those of us who are paying attention can’t help but notice that the greatest constraints are invariably those we place on ourselves.

We wonderful creatures, so noble and daring in our dreams, are self-shackled, self-disappointing. Our most persistent recurring foe, the archenemy of our splendid ideals and aspirations, is always the self.
"A man may conquer a million men in battle, but one who conquers himself is, indeed, the greatest of conquerors."
— The Dhammapada

Sources: Introduction to “Selected Writing of Truman Capote,” Modern Library.

This collage by Hugh Fox.